


There is not enough light in the sky

by Shadowdianne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-27 16:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/Shadowdianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When will I know that everyone has their happy endings?”<br/>She had tilted her head to her left and had remained silent for so long she suspected that Emma had decided that she wasn’t going to be answered. “If it’s like revenge they will never know.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Regina had hold a heart between her fingers she had been unable to think in anything else but how it seemed to tremble, how it moved against her fingers as it glowed, magic keeping it safe. She, somehow, had expected blood and pain oozing out of the organ and when it didn’t she had squeezed it slightly, a minute move she hadn’t realized she had done until she had heard the gasp of the girl, the nameless girl Rumplestiskin had used in order to keep her at his side.

The feeling of strangeness never truly left and even after being responsible of myriads of deaths the fleeting sensation of the heart beating against her fingertips always made her pause. A second perhaps, a moment too brief to catch it. However, Regina always relied on it; it was the moment that made her remember that the ones she was killing were actually real. The act, that had been horrible for her before, transformed itself in an act in where she could show the control she possessed over everyone else. That quiet, brief beat against her magic was what made her smile and laugh as she transformed that war and strength into dust. She had enjoyed the killing. Immensely so.

So when, in the roof of an unnamed apartment in the completely non-magical New York, the feeling of _her_ own blackened heart between her fingers had made her pause. Almost as if a part of her, an unconscious one, was expecting that stubborn beat, the war that all prey had uttered before dying at her feet.

It wasn’t out of revenge. Perhaps not even out of cruelty. She, though, had expected the beat.

And it had never come.

So she had stood as tall as she was, lips shuddering as she tried to remain composed, eyes flaring and tears already streaming down her face, looking, just looking. Her limbs seemed to be on fire as she looked directly at the woman who had been looking at her back from the mirror’s glass she had far too hard tried to destroy ever since the first curse had been destroyed.

The blackened heart laid death and rotten on her palm, its weight unnatural for something so dark and for a second Regina just wondered if that was truly her own heart, if that was truly what she possessed, what she had once possessed. Before Henry, before everything. The heart didn’t yield and so she squeezed; dust and magic floating away as the last shadow of the Queen did the same, one last sad look glowing on the back of those brown eyes she knew too well.

She had wondered why the heart hadn’t weighed at all. She had wanted to ask.

She, however, never did. Because asking would mean to grant her other self a few more minutes in a Land that wasn’t even supposed to have such perception of herself. The Evil Queen had been a persona for another time. One she needed to kill, to forget.

To destroy.

At least that had been what she had thought weeks ago. The thought only being fed by Snow’s eyes when she had turned, still shaken up, still with hundreds of regrets hunting her.

She had seen though the quiet silence of Emma at the side of her mother though, the way the woman’s shoulder’s had seem to hunch forward as the Queen’s remains disappeared from their sight.

The memory of a not-ended conversation had returned to her in that moment, about leaps and horizons and edges and jumps. She hadn’t wanted to ask about it either. Not when her tongue still trembled because of a list that hadn’t wanted to be said.

And now…

The light of midmorning illuminated the forest’s trees lazily as she eyed the barrier that could be seem shimmering for the trained eye of a witch. She had been there, on that same spot, over every day for over a few weeks now. Jekyll’s words coming back to her whenever she gave her back towards the barrier.

And with such words the doubt, always the doubt.

The doubt of why she kept waking up every morning with the feeling of not having rest at all. The doubt of why she kept having the same nightmares about death and murder she had been having as her time as a Queen. The doubt of why she never truly managed to feel herself, unguarded, whenever she tried to. With her _freedom_ , she had realized, had come another kind of jail. One that came from expectations. Although not in the way she had always thought about them before.

“You are early today” A voice made her look towards her left, the smell of mud and leaves reaching her nostrils as she focused once again on her surroundings. The wet and punished patch of road was now occupied by a yellow bug she knew all too well and by a guarded smiling blonde who approached her figure with her hands firmly dag on her back-pockets.

“I couldn’t sleep” Regina replied back, in that strange sincerity that seemed to mar every word of hers ever since they had arrived at Storybrooke from their trip.  She liked the sincerity but not the apparent lack of malice her brain had. And so, like always, she frowned and remembered the heart she had refused to wait for it to fight back.

“I know” The blonde answered back, positioning herself at her usual spot at Regina’s right, head tilted as she eyed the barrier, eyes half closed as she focused on it. “Henry called me, told me you weren’t on your bed”

Regina tried to remain calm as the boy’s name was said. That was something else both Emma and herself weren’t talking. But they knew.

They knew that the blank nights were more usual than they both would like to admit. Regina had nightmares over times she was now unable to protect herself from. She half-wondered what were Emma’s nightmares about. Or why the blonde had accepted Henry’s suggestion of living with his brunette mother without even suggesting something close to make the boy switch places every once in a while. In some part of herself she still remembered the nervous laugh as Emma had tried to explain herself.

“The kid’s things are at your house, is for the best to give him that, right?”

She had agreed with Emma, magic running down her veins at that time, high still from being able to return to the safe haven that was Storybrooke.  She hadn’t realized in that moment. Not the moment after that, nor the week after that.

And then… it had dawn her. The lack of fight.

Glancing towards Emma the brunette sighed inwardly and remained at her now usual spot, her fingers itching as she felt the now familiar tingle that created the younger woman’s power on her skin, a slow, almost lazy, spark dancing on her wrist only to crack back into nothingness.

Emma eyed her, silent. She didn’t ask.

The words “You don’t understand” weighed Regina down. The unsaid “you” hurt her more. Back in an apartment where she had thought that no one else was truly watching anymore.

She almost could remember, she reflected as she tucked carefully the treacherous fingers under her arms as she turned towards the barrier once again, the moment she had proudly said she didn’t regret a single thing she had ever done since her actions had brought her Henry. She could almost picture the look of complete and utter incomprehension she had seen on Pan’s eyes. On Emma’s own amazed pupils, the title of “Lost girl” still far too raw on her. She had always thought that such feelings came from her, from the good woman, from the one that would give everything because of her child.

Now, as she eyed the barrier, waiting for an attack that didn’t come and the suspicion that her other half wasn’t as dead as she had once wished for, she thought different. The Queen in her had been the one who had looked at death and had laughed at it. The Queen had been the one who had been helped into moving the moon. As impossible as it may sound.

The Queen had been the one who had asked to be called Regina.

And if Regina needed to dwell on a moment that marked the moment both of her sides had been first split had been that moment. The moment in where she had asked, had surmised, that there was a fight within her. A fight that needed the annihilation over the other part.

She had been a fool, she sighed while eyeing the barrier, Emma’s presence still strong at her side. The blonde silent and tired as she was also stood and stared, her eyes never quite focusing on Regina. As they usually did these days.

If Regina needed to be truthful that alone stung much more than anything else; the knowledge that Emma wasn’t able to look at her. Or that she didn’t want to.

“I’m sorry about…” The blonde had started once they have been back; Violet and Henry half asleep on the backseat and her voice low and deep due to tiredness. And Regina had sighed and looked at the window, not really sure what she needed to say. Or why she suddenly realized that there was something, a lack of something, that she had become accustomed whenever she saw Emma Swan from the past three years.

The Queen had taken it with her, not the feeling, but the burning, the way the feelings curled inside of her, full of need and want and something that had always made her feel alive. It had been that moment perhaps, when she had realized that The Queen, as it was, didn’t only harbor bad feelings, but also the ones she didn’t want to fight or think about on her regular basis.

No, she resolved as she glanced at Emma, the blonde still standing at her side, green eyes rimmed with tired red born from sleepless nights and as many secrets as she had, red jacket put haphazardly over a white tank top, boots barely tied in lazy bundles that tried to be knots. Emma was…

She wasn’t hers, she blinked that thought away. However, something inside of her protested. Protested and asked why, why it hurt suddenly much more to eye the blonde and think about the pirate. She had already passed that, she had already accepted that back in Neverland, back with the Ice Queen. Back when she had transformed…

In the Evil Queen.

“Do you think they will attack?”

The question alone made Regina cringe, the memory of the malicious part of the doctor looking at her still seizing her throat. Neither her nor Emma truly had even the luxury to think otherwise. The tiredness on the blonde’s tone however was what made Regina want to close her eyes and steal more mornings like this one.

“Yes”

Silence stretched as Emma nodded and stared stubbornly at her feet, where mud and the leftover marks of her footprints seemed to look back at her. She seemed lost, tired, angry. Regina wondered how much she really had been resting.

Neither of them talked of the question the younger woman had uttered one of the first days on their self-imposed duty. Emma’s voice had broken that day, slightly, just a tad, not enough for Regina to decide to act on it but noticeable enough for her hands to itch.

(She had never thought on how much she actually restrained herself. Now everything seemed… pointless)

“When will I know that everyone has their happy endings?”

The “I” had been almost swallowed by sudden pursed lips and Regina… Regina had seen the tiredness and the slow realization on green eyes that once upon a time had been full of fire and righteous fury. The look of a warrior, the look that someone she wasn’t anymore had find electrifying. That had basked as if Emma’s wit had been the water to her thirsty self.

She had tilted her head to her left and had remained silent for so long she suspected that Emma had decided that she wasn’t going to be answered. “If it’s like revenge they will never know.”

Emma had nodded once before returning to her staring, words hanging between the two of them. Words that had been about strength and fight and that now barely were said because the two of them knew that they weren’t going to make a change.

It was stupid how that thought alone truly hurt.

“I liked your jacket, I missed it” Would had been too much though, or too little to even dignify it with an answer of its own. Regina had seen the way the blonde’s pupils seemed always to wait for her and she didn’t want to risk that for a misplaced word. Another thing she had lost.

“I was wrong” Could have been another one. “She completed me”

She had been too focused on what would be her happy ending she hadn’t realized on what the actual fare for it would be. She had thought that no-one else would understand. However, she had realized too late that Emma had already been born without even the option of good or evil. She would forever be bound to the righteous necessity of her parents for her to be good. To be a hero. A Hero who had nightmares about her time as a dark one. A Hero who sometimes seemed to look at her fingers as she expected a fire ball. Or something else. A Hero who spent her mornings in her company without saying “I told you so” even though they both knew…

For Emma’s credit she hadn’t say anything at all that night. Regina often wondered what would have happened if she had.

She was awoken from her thoughts when a warm hand touched her shoulder, another spark seeming to flare inside of her the second she fought against her, submitting it back into oblivion.

“Do you want coffee? I know I could use one”

Regina nodded and turned towards the yellow monster with tired dragging feet.

They weren’t going to talk. Not today. Titles though bumped inside her mind as she smiled gratefully at the younger woman, titles of lives they hadn’t lived. Titles of lives they had wanted for them to work.

Perhaps one day she would find the words, she surmised. Not today though.

Her skin tingled, a spark cracking through her arm.

Not today.


	2. There is not enough darkness in the sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N This is not a continuation, not exactly. But I’ve always found very interesting how Emma and Regina work around each other and how they seem to always be on the verge of saying something to the other (and not only that they love the other woman) So after seeing that apparently we were going to have a look on Emma’s mind a series of conversations started to appear on my mind. The first one was of Regina to Emma and a peek on what the blonde thought about her role as the savior. This one is my take on Emma who has always been, between the two, the hardest one to write about. At least for me!  
> I hope you like it and comments are always appreciated!

The first time Emma had heard the term “savior” directed at her she had wanted to laugh and scream how she, a dropout, an orphan, a lone wolf, could never be one of these knights in shining armor she still could remember from the scarce times in her childhood in where she had had the chance to read such kind of stories. The mere idea of her being selfless was stupid. Not because she would never help another person but because she would never hold the weight of another human being up on her shoulders.

She had grown up surrounded by people that had tried to break her in different and inventive ways. She herself had done things that had destroyed her even more, making her distrust every person she encountered, making her wary and tired. Making her, her. She wasn’t happy back in that life, not like the films that seemed to be made non-stop about women achieving their goals through some random dude. She had never been that kind of woman either way. But she had created a place for her and that had been enough.

But now, when she heard the term savior she didn’t laugh anymore. She just trembled and prepared her body for another blow, another curse, another loss.

It had been difficult the realization that she wasn’t only a princess but the designated savior of a myriad of different creatures that hadn’t even been her favorites back when she was growing up. She had never wanted to be a princess; she had never wanted that kind of happy ending. Happy endings didn’t exist she had reasoned back when she had been five and yet another family had picked up someone else instead of her. What existed where paths, paths you could be forced into or fight your way in.

Forced. That was she had felt back when August had insisted on what a ten-year-old boy had been saying non-stop; she was the savior. She needed to be it. A savior, a mother, a daughter.

 A princess. Perfect.

But she wasn’t perfect, a voice inside of herself had screamed as the first of many more thoughts and betrayals had started to ebb their way in inside of her. She wasn’t perfect, she was just her. An orphan, a woman who had fought back, a woman who had stared down back at the ones who hadn’t thought she would be able to keep walking down her path.

She wasn’t perfect, and yet.

She had forgotten about that, somewhere, in someplace she even couldn’t even pinpoint, in a realm she didn’t even know what to name it. She had forgotten about it. About how she didn’t need to be perfect, about how she didn’t need to rely on being chosen. Not anymore.

And then she had faced herself and she had realized that her, the woman who wouldn’t take the weight of anyone else was now carrying the weight of everyone who would whisper “Savior” every time she thought she was free of the title, of what come with it.

And then, then she had lost herself.

The lapels of the new jacket felt wrong and as she tried to smooth them as best as she could Emma eyed her reflection on the mirror of the room. Green eyes nervously following the movements of pale fingers, in sharp contrast against the black color of the garment. Restless, she shook her head from one side to the other, the ponytail in where she had contained her hair moving alongside with her, grazing her back as she let her hands down, her right hand landing atop of the jacket’s zip.

She tugged it, rising it just an inch while she bit her bottom lip, mind still elsewhere as she tried to take the image the mirror gave back to her; lost and nervous.

Grunting, she inhaled as slowly as possible while trying to keep her emotions and magic under control; energy crackling between her fingers, almost seeming ready to break her skin. Closing her eyes as tightly as she could, she tried to wish the pent-up energy away. With no avail.

“Emma! I thought you were with Archie”

The voice echoing at her back was what made her magic recede and the energy to transform back into the small ball she had come accustomed to deal with. Turning with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes Emma looked towards the brunette woman that stood in front of her, same tired eyes looking back at her from dark brown irises that seemed to scan her before focusing on the woman’s hands.

“I… I was” Emma stammered as Regina closed the door of her office and approached her, a frown already ghostling over her face. “I poofed myself after the session”

The sentence was mumbled more than stated and when Emma focused her gaze back on Regina the brunette was now eyeing her in concern, the blonde’s hands quickly returning back to their tugging of the zipper, the small metallic sound seeming to ricochet inside of Emma’s already full to the brim brain.

“Emma…” The whisper, not barely strong enough to be heard above the sound of the zipper, made the blonde stop and sigh, a similar movement quickly being followed by the brunette shoulders.

When Emma had talked about the possibility of seeing Archie, back a few days ago in one mumbled mess surrounded by empty glass shots and enough sorrow on her green eyes, Regina had just nodded slowly, knowing even in that tired moment that the younger woman wasn’t searching for a yes but a lack of questioning. Ever since, the former Queen had been the first one to know about the sessions between the red-head and the blonde. Sessions that more often than not left Emma completely drained.

But this, the use of magic after a session was definetely something new. And Regina knew all too well the haunted look that seemed to follow those green eyes wherever they looked at.

Or, she thought remembering a New York night for the hundredth time that day, she had known it well.

“He asked me if I think about being the Dark One” The blonde finally spoke, her stance defeated, shoulders hunched, back and legs seeming to be about to fall apart, hair falling limply at her back. “If I have any memory of…”

Silence, Regina made herself keep silent. Silence was the best, silence didn’t judge. And she knew that Emma had come to her desk, to her office, trying, searching, for a woman that still could be felt seated at her chair, looking from the ghost-like memories of what they had been. Emma had come trying to see a woman that wasn’t there anymore and the brunette bite down the scream she too heard grumbling inside the blonde’s chest.  It wasn’t the time for her own memories she decided, and so she stood as tall as she could, not moving an inch towards the blonde but not moving away either, dark eyes following Emma’s fingers as they left the zipper of the dark jacket and rose ever so slowly as they turned themselves into fists.

“He asked me if I think … about Lily. If I’m still…”

Angry.

Anger had always been a source of confidence for both of them. In Regina’s case it had been the source of her power, literally. In Emma’s case anger had fueled her will of keeping moving forward and not look back. She had become the woman she was by transforming her anger into productivity. And until Henry had showed up in front of her door anger had been the better way for her to keep moving forward. Anger at her parents for leaving her, anger at a system that didn’t support her, anger at the world that didn’t helped her. Anger at herself for trusting people who couldn’t be trusted. Anger hadn’t consumed her like it had done with Regina. But she hadn’t need to.

And then, when the curse, when Storybrooke happened, she had been forced to not acknowledge nor anger nor confusion. A leader couldn’t show such treats, such pesky little things that saviors didn’t have. And with the tittle came responsibilities, expectations, stories she had never think twice about them and that suddenly were there, asking to being heard and considered in a place that had only been Emma’s to live in.

As months passed she had forgotten about what it was to feel pain or anger. She had forgotten how it felt to live without the sensation of being already a failure. As weeks transformed themselves into years the recognition disappeared altogether until she found herself looking at Cruella with the sudden knowledge that she had been cut out even to the possibility of having dark, “less than good” thoughts. The daughter of a hero couldn’t be less than pure after all.

She had felt her lungs being ripped off her body when the sound of Cruella’s back breaking against the rocky forest floor had reached her ears.

And tainted, she had felt tainted. Tainted and guilty in the same manner she had felt herself when she had finally looked at Lily’s pupils and had seen what she had refused to see back when she had been a child. With her though, came other things.

Anger, disappointment. And the need, the ever present need of being perfect.

Finding her family hadn’t ease old fears, it had only created new ones.

“I couldn’t tell him” She finally admitted to Regina, the older woman taking a step towards her as she shook her head and tried to talk while her throat seemed seconds away of seizing up and closing in front of the words she had felt escalating inside of her ever since Archie had looked at her from the other side of his desk and had asked her about her anger.  Which made her feel weak in the same level she felt stupid.

Stupid because, as she looked at Regina, she saw comprehension and the ever present shadow of loss looking back at her. Stupid because she felt her arms empty and her body about to collapse. Stupid because she knew that she wasn’t going to be the one who took that first step.

Stupid because she needed to rest, to leave behind the title of sheriff and savior, the tittle of daughter and princess. She wondered what kind of title she would get from Regina.

Miss Swan perhaps. Which would hurt. But not for the same reasons.

And both Regina and herself knew it.

Regina, the woman who knew all too well about her nightmares. Not because she had ever told her about them but because she always knew when to listen. And as tired as she was, as disappointed as she had been back in New York, she knew that Regina, this version or the one she had known years ago, were still the only one who would be able to look at her and know.

Know about the silence and the tiredness and the feeling of never being enough, of always needing to be better, needing to fit the role. A role she didn’t want anymore. A role that had been forced into her.

She wanted to be free and, at the same time, she wondered what she would be if she ever managed to leave her titles behind.

Perhaps, she reasoned as Regina took a second step towards her and caressed the dark sleeve of the jacket, a jacket bought by David and wrapped up by Snow, a jacket she had been unable to say “no” to even if it felt weird and far too heavy for her shoulder to wear, perhaps that’s why she had felt betrayed. Betrayed and alone when she had seen Regina and the Evil Queen. For her they had been one, they had always been one.

As she had desperately wanted for her and the Dark version of herself. The version that had tried to destroy her and had been the only one who had set her free. Before everything, before Hades, before…

“Therapy is always slow, Emma”

The words were said in a dark timber, one she knew all too well and found herself wishing for it not be a strange detail now instead of the rare signature mark of the Regina she now looked at.

“But you” The brunette continued, pained, carefully “You aren’t alone. And you won’t be”

Emma wanted to scream that the problem was precisely that, that she was never alone, that she always needed to be the Hero, the Savior. She knew though that Regina saw the struggle on her nod and swallow and so she sighed before looking dejectedly at the other woman’s hand, thinking on the small warmth she could feel seeping from it towards her arm across the jacket.

Jacket that didn’t feel hers, didn’t feel…

She needed something else. And she knew it.

She knew it in the same way she had known that there had been other names on the brunette’s list back in the apartment, she knew it in the same way she had wanted to hug the woman close and had felt her resolve dwindling when it had been Regina the one closing their distance. She had known… far too much, for too many years.

Except now.

Now that dreams still haunted her and the thought of walking and never coming back to Storybrooke remained a firm one among them.  Dreams about magic had turned to be from exciting to tiring, reality always seeming to be far too strong.

Her magic crackled.

“Henry is waiting” The brunette said with a soft smile, sad, far too sad, far too tired. Emma didn’t comment on it. They knew they shouldn’t. “Want to come?”

And Emma found herself nodding one, then twice.

Strength, she resumed as she felt the lasting feeling of warmth traveling across her arm, was something than just a title. Regina, as different as she was… as she had once been, still knew that.

Perhaps one day she would be able to tell her that. About strength, about her warmth.

And as she followed the former queen she titled her head and admired the light that seemed to be trapped on the older woman’s hair. Tired expression aside she was still the same woman she had once known.

Not today she concluded. Not today.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


End file.
